News

Increase in Underfinished Prime Cattle Continues

21 January 2013

UK - Reports from the major processors over the last quarter of 2012 have indicated an increase in the proportion of under finished prime cattle being slaughtered across the plants.

To confirm this the classification statistics for the final quarter of 2012 have shown a slight increase in the proportion of steers and heifers being
slaughtered at a fat class one or two when compared to the corresponding period in 2011.

In the final quarter of 2011 12.9
per cent of price reported heifers
were awarded a fat class one or
two and in the same quarter in
2012 this had increased by 2.5
percentage points to 15.4 per
cent.

Meanwhile the proportion of
heifers awarded a fat class three
has increased by 1.6 percentage
points between the two periods to
account for 47.1 per cent of the
heifer kill in the final quarter of
2012.

The proportion of heifers
killed at a fat class four was back 3.9 percentage points to 35.6 per
cent in the final quarter of 2012.

Cattle sourced from the dairy herd
tend to tend to have lower fat cover
than suckler origin cattle due to
their genetics and as a result a
larger proportion of dairy origin
cattle have lower fat cover than
their suckler counterparts. In the
final quarter of 2011 36.9 per cent
of dairy origin prime cattle were fat
class one and two.

In the same
period in 2012 this increased to
39.9 per cent, an increase of 3
percentage points year on year.
The proportion of dairy origin cattle
with a fat class three was almost
unchanged at 44.5 per cent in the
final quarter of 2012 while the
proportion achieving fat class four
was back 2.7 percentage points to
15.1 per cent of the dairy origin
kill.

If we consider the steer kill then it
has followed a similar pattern to
the heifer kill with an increase in
the number of animals awarded a
one or two for fat cover as
indicated in Figure 1. In the final
quarter of 2011 19.9 per cent of
steers were either one or two for
fat cover and in the same period in
2012 this had increased to 25.5
per cent.

The proportion of steers
awarded a fat cover of four showed
the biggest change between the
two periods, down 5.3 percentage
points to 17.9 per cent in the final
quarter of 2012. Meanwhile the
proportion of steers awarded a
three for fat cover was almost
unchanged at 56.4 per cent.

However when we compare the
young bull kill between the two
periods in question there has been
an improvement in the fat covers
of young bulls as shown in Table 1.
The proportion of young bulls
awarded a one for cover was back
6.5 percentage points to 10.7 per
cent while the proportion awarded
a two for fat cover was back 3.5
percentage points to 44.4 per
cent.

Meanwhile the proportion of
young bulls in the final quarter of
2012 with a fat cover three
increased by 8.1 percentage
points to account for 41.0 per cent
of the total young bull kill.

If we look at the prime kill in
respect of its source, i.e. suckler
and dairy origin cattle, there are
also changes in the proportion of
cattle within each fat class when
comparing the final quarter of
2012 with the same period in
2011. Figures 2 and 3 show the
break down of the fat class
allocation for suckler and dairy
origin cattle in October-December
2012.